Run by The Trentonian's Nick Peruffo, this blog will provide daily multimedia coverage of the Trenton Thunder.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Links, notes and videos from Day 3

Today was a camp day, which meant there were three games going on at once. I thought there were only going to be two games, but I was wrong. There was Scranton vs. Trenton (which had Nick Swisher playing for both teams), Tampa vs. Charleston, and the Bombers vs. the Yankees. That last game had a lot of younger players, including Taylor Morton and Jake Cave, Damian Taveras and Hector Rabago, and Claudio Custodio and Justin James.

The marquee matchup, however, was between Scranton and Trenton, which featured five innings each of Manny Banuelos and Brett Marshall. That was quite a treat to video, let me tell you what. Banuelos hit as high as 94 and showed some really, really dirty offspeed stuff. If you don't believe me, watch the last pitch of him striking out Zoilo Almonte in the videos below. Almonte got revenge later when he sliced a triple into the right-field corner. Sorry, Zoilo, I didn't get video of that.

I spoke to Graham Stoneburner for a small feature about his injury last year and what he expects from himself this season. Stoneburner also mentioned that he'll throw again on Sunday, the final day of camp, which would line him up nicely for the second game of the season against New Hampshire on Friday (gotta get down on Friday).

I also spoke to Swisher afterward about what it was like to be on the receiving end of pitches from Banuelos and Marshall. He had some really nice things to say about Marshall's slider, which looked particularly dirty at times yesterday.

The Thunder stay home tomorrow to tackle the Blue Jays' Double-A kids. Ivan Nova is supposed to be heading over to the Himes Complex. Frankly, if he winds up starting for the Thunder, I might just drive to Dunedin to watch the Charleston and Tampa kids some more. I guess that's a big ol' TBA.

I do know that no matter where I go, I'll be heading to the big league game at night. I did it on Tuesday, and it was pretty fun. I'm doing it again on Friday, too.

Until then, here are a whole lot of videos to tide you all over until tomorrow.